power of association. The greater force of the past than of the future on the mind, can only be the result of questionable causes. Our real concern with the future is incalculably the greatest, and yet we are dreaming over our own graves, on the events and scenes which throw a charm around the graves of those who have gone before us! Had we seen Netley Abbey, just as far advanced towards completion, as it was, in fact, advanced towards decay, our speculations would have been limited by a few conjectures on its probable appearance; but gazing at it as we did, we peopled its passages, imagined Benedictines stalking along its galleries, and fancied that we heard the voices of the choir, pealing among its arches.
Our fresh American feelings were strangely interrupted by the sounds of junketing. A party of Southampton cockneys, (there are cockneys even in New York,) having established themselves on the grass, in one of the courts, were lighting a fire, and were deliberately proceeding to make tea! "To tea, and ruins," the invitations most probably run. We retreated into a little battery of the bluff King Hal, that was near by, a work that sufficiently proved the state of nautical warfare in the sixteenth century.
LETTER III.
Road to London.—Royal Pastime.—Cockney Coachman.—Winchester Assizes.
—Approach to London.—The Parks.—Piccadilly.—Street Excursion.
—Strangers in London.—Americans in England.—Westminster Abbey.
—Gothic Decorations.—Westminster Hall.—Inquisitive Barber.—Pasta
and Malibran.—Drury-lane Theatre.—A Pickpocket.—A Fellow-traveller.
—English Gentlemen.—A Radical.—Encampment of Gipsies.—National
Distinctions.—Antiquities.—National Peculiarities.
To R. COOPER, ESQ. COOPERSTOWN.
At a very early hour one of the London coaches stopped at the door. I had secured a seat by the side of the coachman, and we went through the "bar" at a round trot. The distance was about sixty miles, and I had paid a guinea for my place. There were four or five other passengers, all on the outside.
The road between Southampton and London is one of little interest; even the highway itself is not as good as usual, for the first twenty or thirty miles, being made chiefly of gravel, instead of broken stones. The soil for a long distance was thirsty, and the verdure was nearly gone. England feels a drought sooner than most countries, probably from the circumstances of its vegetation being so little accustomed to the absence of moisture, and to the comparative lightness of the dews. The winds, until just before the arrival of the Hudson, had been blowing from the eastward for several weeks, and in England this is usually a dry wind. The roads were dusty, the hedges were brown, and the fields had nothing to boast of over our own verdure. Indeed, it is unusual to see the grasses of New York so much discoloured, so early in the season.
I soon established amicable relations with my companion on the box. He had been ordered at the Vine to stop for an American, and he soon began to converse about the new world. "Is America anywhere near Van Diemen's Land?" was one of his first questions. I satisfied him on this head, and he apologised for the mistake, by explaining that he had a sister settled in Van Diemen's Land, and he had a natural desire to know something about her welfare! We passed a house which had more the air of a considerable place than any I had yet seen, though of far less architectural pretensions than the miniature castle near Cowes. This, my companion informed me, had once been occupied by George IV. when Prince of Wales. "Here his Royal Highness enjoyed what I call the perfection of life, sir; women, wine, and fox-hunting!" added the professor of the whip, with the leer of a true amateur.
These coachmen are a class by themselves. They have no concern with grooming the horses, and keep the reins for a certain number of relays. They dress in a particular way, without being at all in livery or uniform, like the continental postilions, talk in a particular way, and act in a particular way. We changed this personage for another, about half the distance between Southampton and London. His successor proved to be even a still better specimen of his class. He was a thorough cockney, and altogether the superior of his country colleague, he was clearly the oracle of the boys, delivering his sentiments in the manner of one accustomed to dictate to all in and about the stables. In addition to this, there was an indescribable, but ludicrous salvo to his dignity, in the way of surliness. Some one had engaged him to carry a blackbird to town, and caused him to wait. On this subject he sang a Jeremiad in the true cockney key. "He didn't want to take the bla-a-a-ck-bud; but if the man wanted to send the bla-a-a-ck-bud, why didn't he bring the bla-a-a-ck-bud?" This is one of the hundred dialects of the lower classes of the English. One of the horses of the last team was restiff, and it became necessary to restrain him by an additional curb before we ventured into the streets of London. I intimated that I had known such horses completely subdued in America by filling their ears with cotton. This suggestion evidently gave offence, and he took occasion soon after to show it. He wrung the nose of the horse with a cord, attaching its end below, in the manner of a severe martingale. While going through this harsh process, which, by the way, effectually subdued the animal, he had leisure to tell him that "he was an English horse, and not an out-landish horse, and he knew best what was good for him," with a great deal more similar sound nationality.
Winchester was the only town of any importance on the road. It is pleasantly seated in a valley, is of no great size, is but meanly built, though extremely neat, has a cathedral and a bishop, and is the shire-town of Hampshire. The assizes were sitting, and Southampton was full of troops that had been sent from Winchester, in order to comply with a custom which forbids the military to remain near the courts of justice. England is full of these political mystifications, and it is one of the reasons that she is so much in arrears in many of the great essentials. In carrying out the practice in this identical case, a serious private wrong was inflicted, in order that, in form, an abstract and perfectly useless principle might be maintained. The inns at Southampton were filled with troops, who were billeted on the publicans, will ye, nill ye; and not only the masters of the different houses, but travellers were subjected to a great inconvenience, in order that this abstraction might not be violated. There may be some small remuneration, but no one can suppose for a moment, that the keeper of a genteel establishment of this nature wishes to see his carriage-houses, gateways, and halls thronged with soldiers. Society oppresses him to maintain appearances! At the present day the presence of soldiers might be the means of sustaining justice, while there is not the smallest probability that they would be used for contrary purposes, except in cases in which this usage or law—for I believe there is a statue for it—would not be in the least respected. This is not an age, nor is England the country, in which a judge is to be overawed by the roll of a drum. All sacrifices of common sense, and all recourse to plausible political combinations, whether of individuals or of men, are uniformly made at the expense of the majority. The day is certainly arrived when absurdities like these should be done away with.
The weather was oppressively hot, nor do I remember to have suffered more from the sun than during this little journey. Were I to indulge in the traveller's propensity to refer everything to his own state of feeling, you might be told what a sultry place England is in July. But I was too old a sailor not to understand the cause. The sea is always more temperate than the land, being cooler in summer and warmer in winter. After being thirty days at sea, we all feel this truth, either in one way or the other. I was quitting the coast, too, which is uniformly cooler than the interior.
When some twelve or thirteen miles from town, the coachman pointed to a wood enclosed by a wall, on our left. A rill trickled from the thicket, and ran beneath the road. I was told that Virginia Water lay there, and that the evening before a single footpad had
